experience: the great necessitator

A brilliant sunset with purple and gold and rusty hues.
A child swinging with legs pumping and face aglow.
An orchestra woven into the sidewalk and a choir decorating the ordinary day with an overwhelming melody.

Experience is the great necessitator and what it requires is words. I know the whole premise of an amazing experience is that words are insufficient – that descriptions are incapable of the glory of whatever occurred.

But words are exactly what experiences require… because without them we will never understand why a crowd of strangers, wrapped up in their own little worlds, would be drawn together by musical notes to participate in a glorious performance that causes children to wave their arms and grown people to stand with gaping mouths.

Why can music do this? How does man’s creativity wield such beautiful and magnetic power?

Where does this beauty come from and does it have a name?

Today, people all over these great United States are celebrating a day of independence with parades and flags and all sorts of star spangled accessories. But if experiences are simply ambiguous reasons to throw celebrations, we’ve denied experience what it really needs: words.

Explicit, meaningful, deep words that make sense of the beautiful and point to its origin.